Second Lebanon War

The Second Lebanon War was fought from 12 July to 14 August 2006 when Israel invaded Lebanon with the goal of halting Hezbollah's rocket attacks on northern Israel. The war severely damaged Lebanon's civic infrastructure, but Israel was unable to destroy Hezbollah; instead, the Lebanese Army was deployed to South Lebanon to keep the peace between Israel and Hezbollah. Both sides claimed victory, with Hezbollah claiming that it had repelled the Israeli invasion, and Israel claiming that it had neutralized Hezbollah's threat from South Lebanon.

Background
In 1982, during the Lebanese Civil War, Israel invaded South Lebanon in response to a Palestinian nationalist's attempted assassination of the Israeli ambassador to the United Kingdom. The First Lebanon War raged from 1982 to 1985 as Israel attempted to destroy the Palestine Liberation Organization, which had launched several terrorist attacks and rocket attacks against northern Israel from Lebanon during the 1970s. In August 1982, the PLO was forced to flee to Tunisia, and Israel was successful in eliminating the PLO from Lebanon. However, several Iranian-backed Shia Muslim resistance movements began to fight against the Israeli and United Nations occupation forces, carrying out the 1983 United States embassy bombing and the 1983 Beirut barracks bombings against the UN peacekeepers and the Israeli IDF forces in the Tyre headquarters bombings. In 1985, Israel and its allied Maronite Christian militias withdrew to a security zone in South Lebanon, ending the First Lebanon War and ushering in the South Lebanon conflict. The loosely-organized Shia Islamist groups in South Lebanon soon united under the banner of Hezbollah, a powerful Islamic nationalist political party and armed organization extensively financed and armed by the Iranians. In 2000, the government of Israel decided to withdraw its forces from the South Lebanon security zone, abandoning their South Lebanon Army allies to be overwhelmed by Hezbollah and forced by the Lebanese government to disarm. A tenuous peace was maintained for six years, but Hezbollah continued to launch terrorist attacks against northern Israel due to the continued Israeli occupation of the Shebaa farms; Hezbollah positioned itself as a Lebanese resistance movement which would continue the fight against Zionist and Western intervention in Lebanese affairs.

Israeli airstrikes and Hezbollah rocket attacks
On 12 July 2006, Hezbollah fired several rockets at northern Israeli towns and attacked two Israeli humvees on the Israel-Lebanon border. Three IDF soldiers were killed and two were captured, and five more IDF soldiers were killed during a failed rescue attempt for the two Israeli prisoners-of-war. Israel claimed that Lebanon's actions had constituted an act of war, as Hezbollah had two cabinet ministers in the Lebanese government, and the terrorists had used Lebanon as a base for their attack. Hezbollah demanded that Israel release several Lebanese prisoners in exchange for the release of their captive soldiers, but Israel refused and instead launched artillery barrages and airstrikes at targets in Lebanon, precipitating a ground invasion. The Israeli Air Force cratered the runway of Beirut Rafic Hariri International Airport, killing 44 civilians, and they also launched airstrikes on Hezbollah's longer-range rocket launchers to weaken their military capabilities. Israel carried out more than 100 artillery, air, and naval bombardments of Hezbollah bases on the first day of the war alone, and, early in the morning of 13 July, Israel destroyed 59 medium-range Fajr rocket launchers in airstrikes targeting Hezbollah positions in South Lebanon. Two-thirds of Hezbollah's rocket capacity was wiped out in Operation Density. On 16 July 2006, 8 civilians were killed in a Hezbollah rocket attack on the Haifa train depot, and Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah claimed that Israel's strikes on civilian targets justified Hezbollah rocket attacks on northern Israeli cities. Hezbollah fired more than 100 rockets a day at Israel, firing a total of 4,228 rockets throughout the course of the brief war.

Ground war
Israel then made preparations to invade South Lebanon and militarily defeat Hezbollah; the Lebanese Army stated that it would fight the Israelis if it advanced northward enough, and Lebanese AA guns fired on Israeli aircraft. 10,000 IDF troops invaded Lebanon, facing hundreds of Hezbollah fighters south of the Litani River. During the ground invasion, the Israeli Air Force carried out bombing raids across the country, targeting governmental institutions which they believed were in use by the terrorist group. Hezbollah focused on inflicting heavy losses on the Israelis, using Russian-made ATGM missiles to attack the Israeli Merkava tanks. On 14 August 2006, after a month of fighting, Israel and Hezbollah agreed to a ceasefire, and 15,000 Lebanese Army troops were sent to fill the void between the Israeli withdrawal and the arrival of UN peacekeeping forces.

Aftermath
The brief 2006 Lebanon War left 121 Israeli soldiers and 44 civilians dead and 1,244 soldiers and 1,384 civilians wounded, while 500 Hezbollah fighters, 17 Amal Movement militiamen, 12 Lebanese Communist Party militiamen, 2 PFLP-GC militiamen, 9 Iranian IRGC soldiers, 43 Lebanese soldiers, 1,191 Lebanese civilians, and 5 UN peacekeepers were killed. Around 1 million Lebanese civilians and 500,000 Israeli civilians were internally displaced by the war, caused by Israeli airstrikes on Lebanon and Hezbollah rocket attacks on Israel, respectively. On 1 October 2006, the Israeli forces withdrew from Lebanon, but both the Lebanese government and the UN peacekeeping forces refused to disarm Hezbollah, which remained a powerful force both in Lebanese politics and as an armed organization.